Friday, September 26, 2008

Protest! Protest! Protest

"More than 150 prominent U.S. economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, urged Congress to hold off on passing a $700 billion financial market rescue plan until it can be studied more closely."

"In a letter yesterday to congressional leaders, 166 academic economists said they oppose Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan because it's a ``subsidy'' for business, it's ambiguous and it may have adverse market consequences in the long term. They also expressed alarm at the haste of lawmakers and the Bush administration to pass legislation."

" ``It doesn't seem to me that a lot decisions that we're going to have to live with for a long time have to be made by Friday,'' said Robert Lucas, a University of Chicago economist and 1995 Nobel Prize winner who signed the letter. ``The situation may get urgent, but it's not urgent right now. Right now it's a financial sector problem.'''

So Why the RUSH?(the million dollar question, right?)

Because if they don't rush and the public gets wind of the actual details they will discover it is a raw deal for the taxpayer and only a great New Deal for Wall Street.

NO MORE DEALS FOR WALL STREET. Punish the Incompetence by NOT rewarding them for being so good at it!!!

Seriously. They are asking for a blank check. A $700 billion blank check for the likes of Goldman Sachs (GS), JPMorgan (JPM), Citigroup (C), Morgan Stanley (MS) and their cohorts that participated in reckless gambling and fraudulent mortgage lending schemes.

"Chief Executive Officer John Allison in a critique of the plan.Treasury "is totally dominated by Wall Street investment bankers" and "cannot be relied on to objectively assess" the impact of government policy on the financial industry, Allison wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to Congress. The letter was verified by Bob Denham, a spokesman for BB&T, North Carolina's third- largest bank."

The very guys asking for the bailout have padded their own pockets, feathered their own nests and and handed out billions of dollars in bonuses to their rank and file, all based on the ponzi scheme that has been the housing market. This is no surprise to them. They all read here. They read Ben's blog. They read Mish's blog. They read us all. They had full knowledge of what they were doing and they kept spiking the punch because there was nobody to stop them. The politicians, the Fed, Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson... they were all in their pockets. These guys were nothing but the band on the Titanic.

Now these INCOMPETENT BOOBS are asking U.S. taxpayers to bail out their bad lending practices to the tune of $700 billion. Just Say NO TO CRACK!

"As congressional leaders struggled to craft a bailout plan for the nation's troubled financial system Thursday, angry protesters mobbed Wall Street, telephones rang off the hook in House and Senate offices and a group of prominent economists sent off e-mail blasts critiquing the proposal."

"More than 1,000 protesters clogged the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, bearing signs calling the bailout a "class war crime."'

"A spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said her five offices had doubled staffing to deal with the constantly ringing phones. Through late Thursday, Feinstein's offices had received a total of 39,180 e-mails, calls and letters on the bailout, with the overwhelming majority of constituents against it."

"Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood) was also hearing it from her district, which includes parts of the city of Los Angeles and unincorporated L.A. County. "My constituents are telling me loud and clear that they aren't convinced," she said in a statement."

"Typical of the tone of such contacts, Sanchez's office said, was a missive from a constituent in Whittier: "The bailout legislation is being rammed through Congress in a matter of days. This is an illegal power grab by the White House and their richest friends on Wall Street."'

"Jason DeMatteis, an engineer who bought a home north of Burbank in 2005---."You have to hold people responsible to some extent," he said. "I find it a very hard pill to swallow that I have to work my butt off to pay my mortgage and other people get bailed out."

Who stands to gain? Only Wall Street.

'"I suspect that part of what we're seeing in the freezing up of lending markets is strategic behavior on the part of big financial players who stand to benefit from the bailout," said David K. Levine, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies liquidity constraints and game theory."

Last night WaMu became the latest and largest bank to fail. There have been 7 bank failures this year, all of them announced on a Friday. WaMu was announced on a Thursday- during a hairy debate on this so called "financial rescue plan" that the majority of the PUBLIC that these politicians represent!!!!

hmmm something doesn't pass the smell test. I smell Game playing to create a sense of urgency.

There should be NO RUSH into a $700 billion package when 190 economists, a current Fed governor, and a former Fed Governor are screaming that this bailout is: A bailout of Wall Street that will cost at a bare minimum $2,000 for every man woman and child in the United States.(thanks Mish)

They have socialized loss in this nation. The Wall Street Crooks have bankrupted this nation and now they want a $700 billion dollar cookie?

Letter from Ron Paul

With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it.

Call them! Let them hear from you!

Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom?

Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for?

Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

5 Comments:

There will be a bailout.It will be a bad plan.It will be poorly run.we will see asset deflation and price inflation for maybe a year or so.we will then get hyperinflation.Someone will get Blamed.If you need to calm down,the recipe for an effective calming fluid follows.Take one quart of Everclear,pour a measuring cup full and drink it.replace the everclear with one cup of finely chopped Valerian root and 2 grams of good bud.REPLACE THE BOTTLE CAP! and shake thoroughly.steep for 7 days,shaking thoroughly twice a day,then strain the fluid,and add enough fresh everclear to fill the bottle.the root and bud can be used in a salad to add piquancy.One cup and a 30 minute wait ad you should be feeling calmer.If you wish to understand how decisions regarding the bailout are being made,drink 2 cups,using the first to wash down some 'shrooms,preferably Amanita Muscaria rather than psylocibes.Take plenty!

Last week I called our state representatives and also called Richard Shelby's office to thank him for standing up and saying NO to this disaster....and I'm a Democrat!!

Athena, I thought the same thing about timing when WAMU collapsed Thursday evening. Hmmm...Treasury of course would have known they were on the brink, and what a monumental embarassment to have the country's largest savings & loan collapse 1 month before the election. I do inded wonder if this was part of the "pass it now" panic about the bailout. And Wachovia is "reaching out" to suitors this weekend. We all knew they were next in line to fail.

And there's talk of "sequential" bailouts and another stimulus package. Where does it end??

A week later, no bailout and the sky hasn't exactly fallen. If the bailout passes, JP Morgan can then dump the WAMU crap they just bought onto the US tax payer.

I parked some of my cash in gold and Swiss Franc funds as an inflation hedge.

All the Washington offices are being flooded with calls, letters and emails coming in at 99 to 1 against the bailout, but I still think we'll be stuck with some sort of ridiculous package.

It won't help the housing market. Bubble prices and conventional lending DON'T WORK.

Institutional Risk Analytics Blog claime 110 banks should fail before 7/1/09,Reggie Middleton's Blog has some good analysis,Naked Capitalism's coverage is excellent,and of course Calculated Risk is still the best written Blog on real estate and economics,but wading through 400-500 comments is impossible.I highly recommend the Ubernerd posts by Tanta for background.Good luck all,systemic collapse is much more likely than not at this point.